Beauty has the power to spellbind everyone—the proof is Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. His last three movies, Dune (2021), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Arrival (2016), have earned him a reputation as a visionary and a sensitive director, despite science fiction as his genre, which normally is considered either too sophisticated for the broad audience to follow or too simplistic to be worth attention, instantly forgotten. Continue Reading...
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November 15, 2021
Removing statues won’t erase the past, could mar the future
Monuments have been created for thousands of years. The word monument itself finds its Greek etymological roots in Mnemosyne, the name of the ancient goddess of memory and mother of the nine muses. Continue Reading...
November 08, 2021
Former Next Digital CEO denied bail after five months in prison
After enduring five months in prison awaiting trial on conspiracy charges under Hong Kong’s National Security Law (NSL), Cheung Kim-hung, former CEO of Next Digital Media company, was denied bail by the city’s high court. Continue Reading...
November 08, 2021
How China’s communist regime will outlast the USSR’s
The collapse of the Soviet Union 74 years after the Bolshevik revolution was supposed to herald the end of communism. Yet the People’s Republic of China lives on, 72 years after Mao Zedong famously proclaimed the founding of the PRC in Beijing. Continue Reading...
November 06, 2021
Despite displays of strength, China has key weaknesses
The recent announcement that China had tested something akin to a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, which is launched into space and then orbits the globe before discharging a missile at its target, underscored yet again that America and its allies have serious grounds to be worried about China. Continue Reading...
November 03, 2021
The trial of Jimmy Lai and seven other pro-democracy activists has begun in Hong Kong
The trial of outspoken media tycoon and longtime Acton friend Jimmy Lai, along with seven other influential pro-democracy activists, began Nov. 1 in a Hong Kong court.
The group is being tried for participating in an unauthorized Tiananmen Square Massacre vigil last year, which is now forbidden under Hong Kong’s stifling National Security Law. Continue Reading...
November 02, 2021
Hong Kong’s extreme National Security Law wins second conviction
A Hong Kong court has handed down a second conviction under the wide-sweeping National Security Law (NSL), this time for chanting pro-independence slogans.
According to ABC News, Ma Chun-man was convicted on Oct. Continue Reading...
November 01, 2021
How Hong Kong moved from two systems to one tyranny
Hong Kong has become the face of China’s dictatorship, the most dramatic evidence of Xi Jinping’s determination to extinguish even the hint of dissent among his people. Today residents of the Special Administrative Region are ruled as completely and cruelly by the Chinese Communist Party as are those living in Beijing or Shanghai. Continue Reading...
October 30, 2021
Discovering human dignity in Villeneuve’s Dune
With an opening weekend revenue of $41 million, director Denis Villeneuve’s Part 1 of his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune has succeeded in getting Warner Bros. to greenlight Part 2, set for a 2023 release. Continue Reading...
October 29, 2021
Pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai to receive the 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award
At the annual International Press Freedom Awards, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will honor Jimmy Lai, longtime Acton friend and outspoken political dissident in Hong Kong, with the 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. Continue Reading...